Fair comment. There are many people who've written great articles for magazines, written amazing research reports, even business plans, but would stumble and very often fail at copywriting. There are some major differences between writing and copywriting. Some of them are...
Copywriting is basically about selling in writing. As the copywriting legend John E. Kennedy, at the dawn of the 20th century defined is, "salesmanship in print". So, here is a short comparison...
| Content Writing | Copywriting |
|---|---|
Editorial focused |
Marketing focused |
Idea, product, concept or services driven |
Client driven |
Focus is on sharing information, instructing, informing and educating |
Focus is on solving a problem and selling a product/service |
It's about what's happened |
It's about what it means to clients |
Interesting |
Action invoking |
Journalism |
Salesmanship in print |
Objective: Inform, educate, dazzle and amaze readers |
Objective: Create a new client |
Well, I could even say that diving is diving is diving. Well, think of water diving (acrobatic jumping into water), scuba diving, skydiving and even dumpster diving. Huge difference.
Hopefully it's a touch clearer now.
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